Ugenya 7/9-7.16

Filippo and I traveled to Ugenya, my second SOTENI Village of Hope, and spent a week there. We did more OVC reports, visiting ten sponsored children with Calvin, the Coordinator. Instead of staying with a family this time, though, we stayed in a hotel called Camunya. I am still confused about how this nice hotel in the middle of rural Kenya manages to continue to operate, but I’m glad it does. One of our assignments while in Ugenya was to, “just eat fish.” So, because we are such diligent workers, we managed to eat fish for dinner about six of the seven nights we spent there. Ugenya is relatively close to Lake Victoria, so I guess they get a lot of fresh fish. We did have to master some timing techniques when ordering, though, since they cooked everything freshly and it took about an hour to get our food. I should clarify that when I say they served fish, I mean the entire fish, eyes and all. Logically, when Marla and Pat, two other interns, joined us in Ugenya, Pat and I decided it was necessary to try the fish eyes, having already sampled the gills. After I carefully extracted one eye, Marla, who was sitting next to me, got spooked by a bat flying through the dining tent, which then caused me to jump and hurl the eye ball to the ground. Luckily, this fish had two eyes, and I was able to extract the second and toast with Pat. Truthfully, it wasn't all that bad until mid-way through chewing I thought about the fact that I was eating a fish eye. Then it was pretty gross. Glad to be able to say I did it, though!

One of the saddest events of our stay there was my accidental murder of a very tiny lizard. It had been in my room for a while and Filippo insisted that I catch it with a glass and release it to freedom outside. Unfortunately for the lizard, when I tried to scoop it into the glass I didn’t quite get all of it and missed its head. Its eyes kind of bulged out and that was the end of that. After a brief memorial service beside the toilet, we flushed it to join fish heaven.

A separate assignment that came up here was an application to establish an AIDS Barefoot Doctor program in Ugenya. This is a program that is already set up in Mituntu and Mbakalo, and it provides home-based care to individuals with HIV/AIDS. The ABDs, as they are called, are members of the community trained in basic nursing care, psychosocial counseling, and HIV/AIDS education, among other things. The program is working well in Mituntu and Mbakalo, and those villages are actually applying to continue and expand their programs. Hopefully it will work out in Ugenya as well.

The OVC visits in Ugenya were very different from those in Mituntu. In Mituntu, all but one of the sponsored children attend boarding schools, so we did not visit any of their homes. In Ugenya, however, most of the students go to day schools. Visiting their homes was a completely different experience, and meeting their guardians was informative as well. One of the most striking visits, for me anyway, was to see a young girl who lives with her mother, a widow, and several siblings. I had read from a previous report that her mother was often sick, and there was suspicion of AIDS, but no confirmation. When we asked the OVC about her health and her family’s health, she mentioned that her mother was still frequently sick. Since her mother was in the room, I decided to ask her about it, without directly mentioning HIV. Surprisingly, she willingly discussed her HIV positive status, and her struggle to deal with the disease in an environment filled with stigma and an unforgiving medical system. She was so open though, which really shocked me because I’d heard so much about the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS. I was immensely impressed by her courage and by her love for her children.

Her daughter, too, impressed me. Her English was good enough to communicate easily, and she walked us from her house back to the road, the whole time talking about how she wanted to be a doctor, but if she continued to struggle with physics, then a nurse. She was so curious about the US, too, and our education systems and my own dreams. I wanted to spend more time with her so we could keep up the conversation, but sadly a bus came and we got on to head back to Ugunja and Camunya. It was a remarkable experience, though, and honestly it is somewhat comforting to know that amidst all of the poverty and sickness there is progress and there are individuals with the courage to share their knowledge on culturally and personally difficult issues for the benefit of their community and country.

Since leaving Ugenya we’ve traveled to Mbakalo, a much more rural area but a very welcoming and beautiful place. More from here later!

Baadaye!